New Expansive Study on Coffee Shows Health Benefits

Two new studies released Monday confirmed what we knew—or at least hoped—all along: Greater consumption of coffee can lead to a longer life.

One study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, surveyed over 520,000 people in 10 European countries. After 16 years, they found that coffee drinking was associated with reduced risk of death from various causes—including liver disease, digestive disease and circulatory disease—in both men and women across all countries. Coffee consumption also lowered the risk of suicide in men and cancer in women.

The participants who drank coffee also tended to have lower levels of inflammation, healthier lipid profiles and better glucose control than non-coffee drinkers.

The second study, also published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, allowed researchers to extrapolate that finding to different ethnicities. This study surveyed over 185,000 African-Americans, Native Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese-Americans, Latinos, and whites. Except for the Native Hawaiians, in which the results did not reach statistical significance, higher consumption of coffee was found to be associated with a lower risk of death in all races studied. Coffee consumption decreased the risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, respiratory illness, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease.

So how much do you need to drink? In the first study, men who drank three or more cups a day had a 12 percent lower risk of dying than those who did not drink coffee; for women, it was 8 percent. In the second study, those who drank two to four cups a day had an 18 percent lower risk of death. But even just one cup makes you 12 percent less likely to die than someone who abstained.

“Given these very diverse populations, all these people have different lifestyles. They have very different dietary habits and different susceptibilities—and we still find similar patterns,” said Veronica Wendy Setiawan, associate professor of preventative medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, who led the second study.